Camgian Microsystems Awarded AFRL SBIR

STARKVILLE, M.S. – April 27th, 2010 – Camgian Microsystems Corporation, provider of advanced electronic systems and semiconductor technologies, today announced it has been awarded a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase 1 project by the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL).

This program is focused on developing an ultra low power System-on-a-Chip (SoC) technology that will enable >10x improvements in size and endurance over current generation wireless micro-sensor networks. This will be achieved through the integration of advanced circuit and architectural design methods targeted to improve wireless micro-sensor node performance in four critical performance parameters: (1) digital circuit design methodologies that enable the energy consumption of the chip to be dynamically matched to the performance needs of the system; (2) digital circuit design styles that minimize crosstalk noise to radio-frequency (RF) and other analog circuits; (3) advanced power and voltage gating and scaling techniques that reduce idle (leakage) energy consumption; and (4) System-on-a-Chip (SoC) design architectures optimizing energy, cost, and size. These elements will be integrated with a unique RF circuit architecture which has improvements in RF switches for signal steering to antennas, power amplifiers for transmitter output, direct digital synthesis and high-frequency mixers for carrier modulation and received signal down-conversion.

“Today’s warfighter is becoming reliant upon more and more high technology systems to provide intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance,” said Danny Merchant, Camgian’s Vice President of Advanced Microelectronics. “Many of these systems are battery operated and need to be small in size and covert. Camgian is driving down the size, weight and power of these systems through the development of energy efficient architectures and the integration of sensors with large scale digital signal processing.”